Unknown 9: Awakening review: a surprisingly intricate gaming gem

After spending nearly 20 hours with Haroona, I truly wish I could spend more time with her.

That’s a testament to Reflector Entertainment’s first video game endeavor, Unknown 9: Awakening. The action-adventure game intertwines engaging gameplay with unique player strategy through Haroona’s powers, stealth, and environmental objects that can be exploited to crush enemies. It brings me back to the era of early 2010s games like Tomb Raider (2013), Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and even Prince of Persia: Warrior Within — in all of the best ways.

Despite some solvable technical issues, Reflector Entertainment has successfully crafted an intricate gem with Unknown 9: Awakening. Its experimental combat makes lots of room for player agency, and its hero, Haroona, is the South Asian AAA action-adventure lead I have wanted to see for decades. Her debut makes me crave the boundless globe-trotting adventures and secrets that await her in the future.

Stepping up

The story starts off with Haroona, Unknown 9’s heroine, stowed away in a vehicle driven by her mentor. Both are Quaestors and are able to push and pull objects and people, similar to how the Force works in the Star Wars franchise (though Haroona unlocks more abilities that set her apart from the Jedi very quickly). What begins as a simple revenge story of Haroona trying to kill the head of the Ascendents, Vincent Lichter, quickly becomes an entire conspiracy theory. Haroona discovers clues around the world and finds secret societies trying to break the cycles of determinism and destruction of a malevolent evil that was sealed away long ago by a group called the Unknown 9.

As a Quaestor, Haroona has a variety of combat skills, powers, and abilities usable throughout the course of her journey to aid in taking her revenge on Vincent. Haroona is a skilled fighter who can use light and heavy attacks close up, dodge enemy melee attacks, and reposition by hiding in tall grass to get the jump on enemies. Where she shines the most is her use of her Quaestor abilities, which can be used depending on her Am gauge. Am is life-force energy that will replenish gradually over time and allows Haroona to push and pull enemies, lob projectiles that lure foes, and shroud herself by turning invisible. Am can even be used to heal when fights become a bit chaotic; that happens fairly quickly and gives the adventure a steady stream of satisfying challenges.

Unknown 9 does a fantastic job of introducing its core gameplay loops in a bite-sized manner early on. It was easy for me to get a feel for what Haroona can do and the choices I had to hone my play style: sneaking past enemies by using tall grass, destroying electric generators to zap enemies, or even breaking lamps that will leave fire in its place to then push enemies to watch them burn alive.

The star of the show, though, is Stepping. As long as you have Stepping Tokens available, this skill allows Haroona to possess an enemy. A time limit ticks down when moving into a new body, but time stops when possessing an enemy. I can do whatever I want in that time window. There’s some strategic depth to that system. For instance, I can take control of an enemy, walk toward another enemy, fire my gun, possess another enemy, and use my melee shockwave on the first body I possessed. After my Stepping Tokens are used up, the whole thing plays out, and I sit back and watch as my foes attack one another.

In those moments, I appreciate how intricate the core combat feels and how easily it becomes second nature. Even when I died during a long combat encounter and had to start it all over again, that just meant I had a new opportunity to experiment with my powers. There is no one way to “win” these combat encounters; the decision-making and scheming are up to you.

Hidden upgrades and puzzles

Throughout Unknown 9, you will find Anomalies, which are collectible pocket spheres used to upgrade skills. You have three skill trees available: Umbric Abilities, Stealth, and Combat. Through these paths, you can upgrade your core abilities to replenish Am through Stepping, become invisible for longer, deflect bullets, and more. Anomalies are the only way to unlock or upgrade these skill trees, which I find refreshing compared to your average action-RPG level-up approach. I could naturally hunt for them on hidden pathways while I searched for other collectibles like documents, blueprints, and dossiers that built out the world further. I always felt free to experiment since I didn’t have to worry about perfecting a fight to get skill points.

As for other fine details, each enemy has a Faze gauge. When maxed out, this allows Haroona to deal a rapid burst attack, dealing massive damage and leaving her invulnerable for a few seconds. Faze attacks feel weighty, especially when I use them on multiple enemies around me and then move toward each to inflict a burst attack. This especially comes in handy with the few boss battles the game throws out, since burst attacks are the ideal way to dish out damage.

There are a lot of terms the game throws at you in immediate succession, but the handy Journal written from Haroona’s point of view explains everything in excruciating detail. I appreciate that the UI is not cluttered with objectives or constant text like other action-adventure games, too. This helped me better take in the scenery, like large canyons, bustling street markets, or rushing waterfalls.

At certain points, Haroona can enter the Fold, a spiritual plane with prints of history and glances at alternate histories. There, Haroona has an out-of-body experience and solves environmental puzzles by redirecting light sources and channeling Am through different tablet sources to open doors. These visually awe-inspiring segments reminded me of Tomb Raider’s puzzles, but they come with some technical woes — Unknown 9’s Achilles’ heel overall. Bugs like one where I’d channel my Am correctly with no result can lead to frustrating moments that had me resetting to clear up problems.

Another technical issue I had was when a friendly NPC got stuck crawling inside a wall. Again, loading the last checkpoint fixed this easily and actually pushed me farther with the NPC appearing right next to me, so I had no qualms. When Stepping into enemies, sometimes their model does not shift properly to correspond with their line of sight, but when you do use the attack where you want, the enemy will use it correctly. This one is more of a visual bug that had zero bearing on the combat at all, but the large puzzle room and the NPC getting stuck on time crawling inside a wall set me back a bit even though the fixes were executed easily on my end.

Players will have to dive into the Fold for extended periods, and those segments make for some of the best spiritual, dimension-shifting, time-dissociative experiences you’ll find in a game this year. These could have been brief puzzle sections in any other game, but they’re grand escapades here that had me questioning what was happening, what would happen, and what could happen.

Haroona and friends

What really draws me to Unknown 9 is its characters. Early on, Haroona crosses paths with a secret society that she must work with to get her revenge. The Morning Star, an airship hub area, allows me to speak to each of these society members about their goals, their lifestyles, and where they are from. Each of these characters comes from a completely different life. I found myself eager to speak to each and every one of them anytime I returned to The Morning Star. I sincerely wanted to know more about Buchra’s extensive knowledge of books, Luther’s sharpshooting cowboy shooting antics, or Fortunato’s passion for music.

These moments leave a real impression on Haroona. I can sense her tone shifting depending on who she speaks to, which is a realistic touch that gives her character depth. That cultural attention to detail is on display throughout the adventure. Hearing background characters speak Bengali (that I could understand as I know Hindi) made me feel represented in a way few AAA titles have. And it accomplishes that while adding more realism to this bustling world.

As for Haroona herself, I love her character. Plain and simple. She feels like a hero I would have seen beside Lara Croft and Nathan Drake if this game had been released around the 2010s. Actress Anya Chalotra, known as Yennefer from Netflix’s The Witcher, is extraordinary in the role. There is a lot of depth in Haroona and her portrayal; you can feel a lot boiling inside Haroona. It’s not just her revenge for Reika that defines her. You can feel her change when she discovers a place or a group of people she belongs with. When Reika is taken away from her, Haroona very much pushes people away and only lets those near her that can aid her to hunt down Reika’s killer. Moments where she called out colonialism endeared me to her. She is affectionate and true to herself as best she can be. The titular Awakening is not just about her powers; it’s about opening her heart to new people to let them inside.

Gaming enthusiasts tend to talk a lot about how they want all-new games rather than playing the same tired franchises. Even with some technical hiccups holding it back in a few places, Unknown 9: Awakening delivers a fresh new world filled with memorable characters and an inventive combat system that pushed me to experiment with my powers. It may have gotten lost in 2024’s busy holiday season, but I hope more players return to it once the flood of new games slows. It’s the kind of hidden gem that deserves to be discovered.

Unknown 9: Awakening was tested on PlayStation 5 with a code provided by the publisher.